Bloated plot, choreography for 'Moulin Rouge'

George Balanchine once famously joked that the ballet world would enjoy boffo box office if every production were billed as "Swan Lake." It was great to see a jam-packed house at Northrop Memorial Auditorium on Saturday night, when the Royal Winnipeg Ballet -- aided by a leg up from Hollywood -- upstaged the ultimate Russian classic with a next-generation crowd-generating name: "Moulin Rouge." Sorry, make that "Moulin Rouge - The Ballet."

Take a famous title and hang a story on it? Hey, it worked for "An American in Paris," right? Matthew, a naive young painter, comes to fin de siècle Paris and falls for Nathalie, a spunky laundress who lands her dream job can-can-ing for the lech owner of that fabled hot spot, the Moulin Rouge. Before you can say "Giselle" -- unfortunately, it's much, much later than that -- there's a dead body and a broken heart.

Actually, for a ballet, that's plenty of plot. But apparently not enough for dramaturge Rick Skene, who piles on several unnecessary distractions (not one but two absinthe-fueled dream sequences, for example) that get in the way of the real purpose of the production, which is to thrust a few dozen members of this well schooled company into a series of splashy can-can and tango showstoppers.

In an evening that didn't quite seem to know where to fall on the playing-it-straight/sending-it-up spectrum, an original score might have glossed over some of its "Moulin Rouge - The Retread" taint. Instead, the ballet moves to a predictable pastiche of familiar French music-hall melodies. How nice to see -- and hear -- Quartetto Gelato make a few brief, atmosphere-inducing (and oddly amplified) appearances, but then it was back to the recorded Offenbach.

Performances rose above the weight of Morris' bloated, repetitive choreography. Vanessa Lawson, radiating effervescence and elegance, clearly owned the evening as Nathalie. Gael Lambiotte invested his Matthew with an appealing wide-eyed innocence; his peak moment was the romantic duet he shared with Lawson that beautifully capped the first act. In the Juliet Prowse role -- you know, the saucy, leggy minx -- Jo-Ann Sundermeier was clearly having a blast. Ditto Yosuke Mino as, yes, painter Toulouse-Lautrec.

Loved the vivid costumes, by Anne Armit and Shannon Lovelace. Set designer Andrew Beck's combination of pretty painted backdrops and ungainly set pieces (murkily lit by Pierre Lavoie) didn't quite come together. The end results raise this question: What would Myron Johnson and his Ballet of the Dolls have done with the same theatrical material and big budget?

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757